


Whispers

by rey_of_sunlight



Category: Lockwood & Co. - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Angst, Book 3: The Hollow Boy, Book 4: The Creeping Shadow, Book 5: The Empty Grave, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Loneliness, Possibly Unrequited Love, Spoilers for Book 5, Unrequited Love, and pain, but i am always a sucker for angst, some grumbling about the ending, this pairing was not my idea, what fan of jonathan stroud's isn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 14:12:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13882539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rey_of_sunlight/pseuds/rey_of_sunlight
Summary: A sequence of musings from the skull to Lucy, on, among other subjects, the stains on her clothes, the rashness of her actions, and his own anarchic snarl of feelings towards her. Set roughly from book three to the end of book five. Inspired by Chokopoppo's wonderfully thoughtful meta on this pairing, which can be found on her Tumblr here: http://chokopoppo.tumblr.com/post/170892322052/i-saw-that-you-posted-about-writing-lucyskull





	Whispers

‘Luuuu-cy. This is the voice of your conscience. Don’t you see how pitiful and alone that little skull is, locked in his jar and all alone? Wouldn’t you like to let him out? To let him be free? I, as your moral guiding light, implore you to - ’

* * *

 

 ‘Isn’t five hours of sticking me in a cupboard just a _bit_ excessive?’ 

* * *

 

‘Just so you know, Lucy, Holly’s practically radiating bounciness and smiles and wholesome appeal today. Oh, and her skirts even look freshly ironed, and I doubt she’s let a single carbohydrate into her mouth. And Lockwood just seems to beam more and more every time he looks at her. When was the last time you ironed your skirt? There are about a thousand extra creases on it, and I’m pretty sure that’s a jam stain on the front. Listen to me, goddammit – hey! Who do you think you are, stuffing me in with your dirty socks? You know you can still hear me!’

* * *

 

‘Alright, you’re only going to hear me say this once, but – maybe that was a little harsh. Just maybe. I know there’s still a bit of me that longs to have dashingly floppy hair and a winning smile and a frankly horrifically tight suit. Even if you’d have to be blind to think Holly and Lockwood could ever be a thing, or. Well.’

* * *

 

‘You’re dead to the world. Shame it isn’t literal. Now that was a bad joke, even by my standards. You’d think I’d have come up with some better ones by now, since I’ve all this time to just drift and float and think. But I’m still fond of the old reliables. Girly. I thought you were too. Thought that now you’d found your nice little routine of running about and mooning after that lanky-arsed pillock and never looking up to think. And I don’t blame you. It’s not a bad old life, longing and waiting and hoping and never doing anything about what you really want. I should know.’

* * *

 

‘Lucy, I know you’re not waking up. But maybe some of what I say will penetrate that flimsy lump of sponge you call a brain. Do you really think that living here, working here, all alone, is really going to mean Lockwood will be out of danger forever? What’s going to happen to Lockwood now you’ve left? What happens when Mr Gorgeous’ Sight starts faltering, hm? What happens when he gets too old to go legging it round London after ghosts? What do you think: that he’s going to tuck himself away quietly for the rest of his life with a cup of tea, or fling himself into danger, this time completely blind? It’s sweet, really, little girl, that you’re young enough to think otherwise.’

* * *

 

‘What’s going to happen to you, as a matter of fact? Once your Listening goes, I go, and frankly, you’re not all that far off being too old to hear a thing. All you’ve got in this little flat is me and your profession. Here’s the thing, Lucy. Once something or someone’s got their hooks in you, it doesn’t just go because you want to ignore it. I watched Bickerstaff destroy himself and everyone around him, all because he was desperate for a sneak preview of where he was headed anyway. I’ve watched child after child march out on the front lines of this warzone you still call a city, and even when their bodies get brought back blue with their last look of terror still in their eyes, still more children swarm out of Fittes for the _privilege_ of taking their places.'

'Lucy, you can live with the hollow boy, or you can live with a hollow heart. You’ve built your whole life on the foundation of being useful, whatever that might mean. It may as well to be someone you love.’

* * *

 

‘Lucy.’ The skull pauses. The skull does not pause often. Silence, he finds, tastes much too like Dark London for his liking.

‘Lucy, I - ’ Another silence. Must be a record. Even on the now thankfully rare occasions Lucy leaves him behind while she goes on a case, he chatters, cackles, blows raspberries; anything to fill the void. He glances out of the window. Dusk settles slowly across the jumble of heights that make up London’s rooftops, as it becomes easier and easier for him to take form.

Half an hour since she left. He’d strained to take form before she swung the door shut; he could have sworn he’d felt his ectoplasm leaking from the jar with the amount of pushing and twisting he’d forced on it.

If anything was ever going to do the trick, surely being a saviour from a literal explosion would have done it.

‘Off they go,’ he mutters. ‘Lucy and Lockwood. Like a pair in a nursery rhyme, or two heroes in a fairytale.’

Putting on a singsong lisp, he continues, ‘Lucy and Lockwood, sitting in a tree…the two noble young agents. They’ve slayed the dragon herself, and now they’re out to tackle the Problem head-on. Pity they’ve only got about two years max before all the psychic abilities they ever had sputter out, and that now DEPRAC have got the key, they’ll swoop in and relegate hauntings to history in no time, and that little Lucy and Lockwood will soon have no purpose, no profession and nothing whatsoever in common. But hey. Who doesn’t like a good love story?’

Thirty-five minutes, now. It’s likely to be hours before she gets back. The skull wheezes an entirely unnecessary breath out. He’d call it a sigh, if he considered himself more emotionally vulnerable. ‘Lucy. With all the Listening you’ve learned how to do, it’s a shame you never learned how to see.’


End file.
